


Tädi Katri and the Troll

by wavewright62



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: F/M, Family legend, Sauna, Tall Tales, Year 10 Finland, liar liar pants on fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 01:23:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12830346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wavewright62/pseuds/wavewright62
Summary: A woman who works as a carver of official government stamps and sometimes gets extra income from the produce of her homestead in Saimaa, tells a bit of family history to a visitor.  This includes a flashback to sometime about the Year 10 or so.





	Tädi Katri and the Troll

**Author's Note:**

> This serves as my entry for the letter T in the SSSS Alphabet Challenge.
> 
> 'Tädi' simply means 'Aunt' in Estonian.

The birch bark tea was bitter, but hot. Once they got past the bitterness, most visitors appreciated the warming qualities of the brew. Helle-Mai poured herself a cup as well, and stirred a generous spoonful of honey into each mug. The visitor kept her expression bland, but Helle-Mai noticed the eyes involuntarily widening.

Honey was an expensive commodity around most of the Known World, and Helle-Mai liked to keep an ostentatiously large jar on the benchtop, visible to all the traders who came to her island. Her stated trade was carving official stamps for the Finnish government, such as it was, but she augmented that income with produce from their homestead. While it was permitted to make alcoholic beverages for personal consumption, it was illegal to sell it to others unless you had a special permit. Fortunately, Helle-Mai could produce her permit (with all of the requisite official stamps) on demand, if anyone asked for it. With careful husbanding of her trees and bees, she could produce enough mead and fermented birch beer to meet local demand.

She saw the visitor looking at the work table, with its half-finished wooden stamps and carving tools. Helle-Mai picked one up and looked at the cutting edge with an appraising eye.

"These tools belonged to my grandfather. I spent quite a bit of time with him when I was young, and he would tell me stories. He was a teenager when the Rash illness came to Estonia, and his father and sister died of it." Helle-Mai tapped the large engraved silver shield pin at her neck, an heirloom from old Estonia. "His mother fled with her two surviving children and her orphaned niece. They made their way to Finland, and stayed a while in Lahti. That was where he met his first wife, Katri. She was apparently quite a lively and daring person, and they used to raid abandoned houses in Lahti together after most of the surviving populace fled to Saimaa.”

“It was on one of those raids that he got these tools. He’d loved drawing as a boy and had been shown how to make woodcuts, and he took up the practice again to while away the evenings in their safe house. I still have some of the blocks he made. See this one?” She picked up a woodblock from the shelf next to the work table and showed the visitor the picture.

[](https://imgur.com/ajafuhq)

“It’s supposedly about a real true story, about the time Katri was attacked by a troll while taking a sauna…”

\------

“You want to take a sauna _now?”_ Daavit and Katri had only just managed to break into this house and check it for nests. Like most of the houses in this secluded neighbourhood situated by a meandering stream, it didn’t outwardly show much damage from troll trepidation.

“Yes, now. Right now, this afternoon.” Katri emphatically brought her hands down onto the kitchen benchtop, sending up a small cloud of dust. “Look, we have to stop for the night anyway. This place is clear of any nesting sign, and did you see? Their sauna is not only still in good condition, there’s even a great supply of wood all ready for us.”

“It’s half bug-eaten.” Daavit scrubbed at his beard with his gloved hand. He had only checked the woodshed enough to see that it didn’t harbour a troll nest, not enough to take a full count of all of the insect species that may have taken residence in the last 10 years. “And I only made a quick look, there may be rats in there.”

Katri waved her hand. “I am taking sauna, I don’t care.” She turned on her heel and walked out to the sauna without a backward glance, flipping her long blonde plait behind her as she strode away.

Daavit could understand well enough. The prospect of a sauna did sound so very enticing, and such a _normal_ thing to do. They didn’t get a lot of normal. But he had to check out more of the house as a precaution anyway. The lack of broken windows anywhere on the house made it a lucky find.

The former residents of this home could stay in their bedroom where they lay, their skeletons entwined under the moth-eaten blankets, the long-empty water glasses and pill canisters still on the nightstand beside them. Daavit and Katri had seen many like them in their time wandering the ruins of Lahti. _These weren’t even all that knobbly with the Rash yet, they must have gone early,_ thought Daavit.

They usually ended up sleeping in the kitchens or lounges of the houses they occupied anyway, just in case they had to leave quickly. They were both immune to the Rash illness that had devastated the land 10 years before, but they were not immune to wounds or infections, or attacks from animals and beasts. Daavit had been a teenager in Estonia when the Rash broke out, escaping with his mother, a sister, and a cousin to Finland. He had ended up going with a nomadic gang to get supplies, shortly before the electricity and cellphone networks went down for good. When he returned to the area where he had left his family, the living refugees had gone but there was no way to track their movements. Now Katri was his family.

Daavit sighed. Katri certainly was headstrong, but her fierce bravery had gotten them out of more than one scrape in their time together. Shaking his head, he fished the firestarter kit out of his rucksack and laid it carefully on the kitchen bench. She’d be back for it shortly.

Katri came back inside, grinning from ear to ear. Spying the firestarter kit, she burbled, “Yes, just what I need, you jewel. Come give us a hoist to clean out their chimney.”

Daavit popped his head from the cabinet he’d been examining, also grinning. “Look at this!” He displayed a dusty jar and rubbed off some of the layer of dust with his glove, revealing a bright golden interior. Katri gasped as Daavit crowed, “They have _bottled peaches!”_ They managed to prise off the corroded wires, and Katri shifted from foot to foot impatiently as Daavit sniffed carefully at the interior. He turned morose eyes to her, “Oh they are quite spoilt, we cannot possibly-“

“Liar!,” Katri said, wresting the jar from his hands, “You are such a bad liar.” Daavit laughed as she tore off a glove and fished out a slippery peach slice with her fingers, shoving it into her mouth greedily and thoroughly licking the sweet syrup off her fingers. He was so transfixed by her expression of ecstasy that he almost forgot to dig in as well. Seconds later, they had polished off the whole jar between them, and Katri rubbed her belly. “Ufff, I ate that way too fast. Let’s get this sauna started, okay?”

\------------

The sauna was exactly what they needed, and they luxuriated in it, alternating with a dip in the stream that bent around the property. The bathrobes and towels that had been left hanging in the house were still in surprisingly good condition.

Daavit finally shook his head, and said, “I’ve had enough.” He splashed water on his face one last time and stood up.

“Meh, that’s Estonians for you, can’t handle a real sauna,” she teased. Daavit snorted at the slight to his countrymen. “I’m not quite done yet,” Katri purred from the where she lay on the top bench, “I want to stay in until every bit of me has sweat out all the crap of the last month. Be a dear and hand me the löyly bucket, please?” She waited until Daavit went out before she poured fresh water onto the rocks, then lay back to enjoy the steam rolling down off the ceiling.

Daavit towelled off and got dressed in the anteroom. As he put his belt with its knife sheath back on, he called in to Katri, “Should I leave my puukko with you?”

“No, I should be fine,” she called back, “but that reminds me, could you check to see if they have a good one here I can ‘borrow’? That last one was pretty lousy, broke off the first time I tried to use it.”

Daavit agreed and walked around the perimeter of the sauna to check it. He popped his head back inside, “don’t take too long, it’s nearly sunset.” It was their usual protocol to be barricaded inside any structure once night fell.

Katri murmured her assent, and starting scrubbing at her skin with her fingers, loosening dead skin as she massaged, and quite lost track of time. She put her ‘borrowed’ robe on loosely as she went outside to stoke up the fire, “just one last time,” she told herself. They’d pretty much run out of the wood they’d carried over anyway, and she didn’t want to carry any more wood from the woodshed while she was naked.

As she returned from stoking the fire from the outside portal, she thought it odd that the door to the sauna was ajar. _Getting sloppy with all this luxury, peaches and sauna and bathrobes and everything,_ she thought. She could almost hear her mother chiding her. Her mother was long gone, they all were gone, the Rash took them all and left only Katri. She didn’t let herself think about them very often.

She just about jumped out of her skin when she opened the door to the sauna. A badger had gotten in, and it hissed at her. Katri had only gotten a quick look before she yelped and shut the door, but that look was enough to ascertain that it was a Beast and not a normal badger. The door thumped as the badger threw itself against it, and Katri leaned against it as it thumped again and again. She could hear it scratching at the door with its long claws as well. The wood wouldn’t last long against those claws. She cursed the lack of a knife to defend herself, and looked around in a panic to see what she could barricade the door with. She found a piece of wood close at hand that would fit through the handle, which gave her enough time to flee.

She got a sudden flash of inspiration and stoked the sauna fire from the outside, as full of wood as she could stuff into the firebox. The thumping already was lessening, and she put her ear against the door carefully. Katri snuck back into the anteroom to collect her things, and could hear the beast badger still scratching. The sauna door was holding. As she opened the door to the outside as stealthily as she could, she saw yellow eyes peering back at her from the overgrown walkway between the sauna and the house. She quickly closed the door to the outside again.

Cursing to herself, she tried to figure out what to do. The beast badger was keening in the sauna, clearly in distress and still scratching. She wasn’t certain what the yellow eyes belonged to, but she dared not call out to Daavit in the house, lest the yellow eyes had friends. For a long moment she stood in the anteroom, hugging her clothes to herself, too panicked to even put them on. Her side of the sauna door splintered near the bottom as claws broke through, galvanising Katri into action.

She decided to chance a dash to the river, which was closer than the house, hoping to outrun whatever the yellow eyes belonged to. Trolls didn’t usually like to cross water, although this stream might be too small to stop one if it was bent on catching her. Unfortunately, water didn’t bother beasts. The badger was right behind her as she fled. She saw a flash of something move swiftly past her along the stream, and as she whirled around an almighty squealing erupted. The yellow eyes belonged to a lynx, which had caught the beast badger at the stream’s edge. The lynx caught the weakened beast behind its head, was shaking it and fastening its own claws into the beast’s back. With a jerk of its head the lynx locked eyes with Katri briefly, before dragging the squealing badger through the stream and into the trees on the other side.

Katri stood where she was, heart hammering, barely able to breathe. As the squealing got more distant and then stopped completely, she came back to herself. Shakily she hurried into the house. Daavit looked up crossly at her from under the kitchen bench, now laden with jars of preserved food.

“About time you decided to move your indulgent ass,” he scolded. “What took you so long anyway? I told you to get back inside before sunset. I was just starting to get worried about you.”

 _Just starting?_ Katri jutted out her chin defiantly. _Who does he think he is, to scold me like that? I’ll fix him._ She had no idea that she was about to create a new family legend.

“ _Well!_ Let me tell _you_ what kept me!” She threw her clothing bundle angrily onto the floor. “There I was, having a very nice sauna, when this _big ugly troll_ burst in…”

\---------

….“Seems she managed to lock it in there and she stoked the fire to get the sauna roaring hot. After about an hour, she opened the door to the sauna, whereupon the troll staggered out and lurched to the stream here to cool off, and then stood up, thanked Katri and walked calmly into the woods, never to be seen again.” Helle-Mai put down the woodblock as she finished her story, picking up her birch tea again and grimaced. It had gone cold.

The visitor nodded. “Truly. What an interesting story.”

Helle-Mai nodded. She didn’t get a chance to chat to visitors very often, it was usually just business. She found herself warming to the subject. “Katri died somehow; I don’t know if it was Rash or not, my grandfather would just shake his head and sigh and change the subject. My grandfather found and came to live with the rest of his family here in Niinisaari, married my grandmother and they had my mother and uncles. One of my uncles went up and worked on one of the boats on the Keuruu-Pori waterway, but the rest of the family stayed here. I’m one of four children, well six originally I suppose, two of them died as babies, the first one and the one right before me. My husband comes from a really big family, he’s one of nine! We don’t have any children, but two of my nephews live with us. You met Jukku, he brought you here in the boat.”

“I sometimes try to make pictures like my grandfather used to make, but I have no talent for it. He said a lot of his pictures had meant to be book plates, but he also told me he didn’t have books before the Rash came, they just had some sort of, I don’t know, magic _apple_ where the stories would appear on it and you could turn the pages by waving your hand over the apple. He left his behind in Estonia because they couldn’t bring anything from the Rash areas.” The visitor stared in disbelief.

Helle-Mai shrugged, “I don’t know, doesn’t make sense to me either, he said it was an apple. It’s probably like sending a troll to sauna and having it come out like a human, just a story."

“Well, that’s all quite fascinating,” the visitor said, briskly putting her teacup down and standing up to go. She dug into her purse and handed Helle-Mai some government notes. “I thank you, our expedition will find a bit of honey useful on their journey. As well as,” she hefted the package in her hands, “this most _useful_ stamp for the officials in Pori.”  
  
"Are you sure you won't be having any of the _special_ honey this time?"  
  
"Ah." She cleared her throat. "Not this time, thank you."  
  
“Pleasure doing business with you, as always, Taru Hollola,” Helle-Mai smiled broadly as she tucked the notes into a tin box, “may Vellamo smile upon your expedition.”

**Author's Note:**

> This originally appeared in the Fan Forum as the intro to my self-insert SSSSona, Helle-Mai Räätäli. I've expanded it, partially to explore life in the Known World in the years following the apocalypse, and partially to delve a little into the very human idea of the little lie that takes on a life of its own. Katri's true story probably could have stood on its own, but the tall tale she wove to her partner Daavit endured and became family legend.
> 
> Also, Mikkel's cookies were quite possibly sweetened with a bit of honey, and the honey had to come from somewhere, why not the homestead of my SSSSona?


End file.
